Re: phonology of borrowed words

 --- Adrian Morgan <morg0072@...> wrote: >
Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
> > Borrowing is a complex feature, as much linguistic
> as it is social,
> > so purely phonetic considerations cannot always
> explain why some
> > word is borrowed in some way or another.
>
> A substantial part of the introductory phonetics
> topic I was in this
> year concerned observing how French, German, Italian
> and Spanish words
> are pronounced in English, compared to the original
> pronounciations.
>
> The most interesting cases were those where the
> class was split in
> unexpected ways. For example, for most people the
> vowel in "genre"
> was [O] as in "con", whereas I have always
> pronounced it [o] as in
> "corn". I was surprised that my pronunciation was
> not more common.
>
hmmm. 'genre'. it's SO alien to my phonology i
basically pronounce it frenchly, except with a [r\@]
rather than a [R] at the end : [ZA~r\@] . . .

> Also, it was interesting that the pronunciation of
> some foreign words
> has become _more_ authentic over time. For example,
> younger members of
> the class consistently pronounced the final syllable
> of "reservoir"
> [vwa], while only the very oldest members chose
> [vo:].
>
so some people pronounce it ( attempting to do an
australian accent ) ['r\Iz@vo:] ? here it's definitely
['r\Ez@vwA:]

incidentally, on the topic of doing an australian
accent, i frequently get mistaken for an australian. i
think it's something to do with the fact i realise
/EI/ as [&I]. and, in eg the word 'australia', where
the diphthong follows an [r\], [VI]. the oddest thing
is being told i'm australian by an australian . . .
surely they should be able to tell my accent's not
right !

bn

=====
bnathyuw | landan | arR
stamp the sunshine out | angelfish
your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre

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